


It's Come For All That You Hold Dear

by anistarrose



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Balance Arc, Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-01 19:44:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20263519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anistarrose/pseuds/anistarrose
Summary: Why Barry tells his amnesiac self that he's afraid of the dark.





	It's Come For All That You Hold Dear

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from [Everything Goes Dark](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gggJdISp8L4) by The Hoosiers, which always makes me think of the Hunger's arrival, especially in the final cycle.

Strictly speaking, Barry Bluejeans is not afraid of the dark. It would be an ironic fear for a necromancer as powerful as himself to have, but he’s not _that_ much of a walking paradox. Not quite.

No, Barry is afraid that when he looks up at the sky, he’ll see fewer stars than normal, and then even fewer the next night, and then fewer and fewer still until he’s plunged into an unforgiving blackness.

He’s afraid of the color being sapped from the world, of the grass turning an ashen gray while the forests and the seas, which he once loved so much, melting into inescapable dark voids. 

He’s afraid that the clouds overhead will stop swirling, and the brewing storm will turn out to rain down not water nor hail, but rather pillars of tar. He’s afraid that the shadows surrounding him will come to life, ribbons of color running through them, and tear apart this world that has already sacrificed so much without a choice in the matter. He is afraid of the reminders of the worlds he failed to save, reborn as shells of their former selves and determined to cut him down.

He is more than anything afraid that one day, the shadows will finally catch him and his family, and they’ll reawaken as shadows themselves, absorbed into the monstrous thirteenth plane. He’s afraid that all the bonds that serve as the threads of his spectral robe and all the love that holds together his volatile, warped soul will come undone in a heartbeat, replaced with a looming nihilism and an insatiable hunger for something the universe cannot provide him. 

But when he’s living, when he’s breathing, when he’s wandering the world and searching, he can’t remember _why_ he’s afraid. He can’t remember why counting the stars in the sky eases his anxiety even though he knows it’s a fruitless task, or why harmless shadows that look a little bit too much like animals or robots startle him even when he knows they’re cast by inanimate objects.

So he tells himself it’s just the dark he’s afraid of.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, comments are welcomed as always!
> 
> [(also on tumblr)](https://anistarrose.tumblr.com/post/187037637036/strictly-speaking-barry-bluejeans-is-not-afraid)


End file.
